1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a decoding technology and it particularly relates to a method for decoding convolutionally coded signals, and a decoding apparatus and a receiving apparatus utilizing said decoding method.
2. Description of the Related Art
One of coding techniques for correcting error of signals in a channel is the convolutional coding technique. The Viterbi decoder is a decoder that decodes convolutionally decoded signals. If this convolutional coding and the Viterbi decoding are combined together, a high error correction capability can be achieved (see Reference (1) enlisted in the following Related Art List, for instance).
Related Art List
    (1) Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. Hei05-244019.
In recent years, the convolutaional coding technique has also been applied to the mobile communication, wireless LAN and the like. Accordingly, there is a growing need for the decoding of convolutionally coded signals. In the Viterbi decoding, the amount of processing is generally large and the power consumption is also large. For this reason, a reduced amount of processing is now desired.